Rational Calculation

Nate Silver and Ned Price disagree as to whether Times reporters Michael Schmidt and Nicholas Fandos correctly portray the White House as "calculating" because

The Trump administration directed a top American diplomat involved in its pressure campaign on Ukraine not to appear Tuesday morning for a scheduled interview in the House’s impeachment inquiry.

The decision to block Gordon D. Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, from speaking with investigators for three House committees is certain to provoke an immediate conflict with potentially profound consequences for the White House and President Trump. House Democrats have repeatedly warned that if the administration tries to interfere with their investigation, it will be construed as obstruction, a charge they see as potentially worthy of impeachment.

Democrats from the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees did not immediately respond on Tuesday.

But in making the decision, hours before he was scheduled to sit for a deposition in the basement of the Capitol, the Trump administration appears to be calculating that it is better off risking the House’s ire than letting Mr. Sondland show up and set a precedent for cooperation with an inquiry they have strenuously argued is illegitimate.

Or the White House may be panicked as all hell and not really calculating rationally at all.... https://t.co/HPjqRhaOH5

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 8, 2019

I'm throwing in with Price. As Lawrence O'Donnell's guest James B. Stewart, lawyer, NY Times columnist, and author of the intentionally ironically titled "Deep State" explains, then-Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein twice raised the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to rid the nation of President Trump. He even approached Attorney General Sessions and Chief of Staff Kelly in the  effort and (as seen beginning at 3:37 of the video below)

....the Justice Department was drafting the press release that he was fired when he went over there (summoned by Trump). He was being taken to the woodshed. Everybody knew, the New York Times had printed that he was going to wear the wire. Trump was ready to fire him.

Somehow, he left with his job intact.What did he do to keep his job and reassure Trump? And then, in turn, what did he do to keep Mueller in the job? I mean, he was Mueller's boss. What did Muellerhave to do or not do in order to keep from being fired by Rosenstein?

Now, Rosenstein's colleagues say to me, in his defense, that his sole mission was to protect Mueller. He did what he had to do to get Mueller over the finish line.

But if the price of getting him over the finish line was to clip his wings, to not let Mueller insist on getting testimony from the President (as every prosecutor I now believes he should have done), then for Mueller to have ignored the whole story of Rosenstein in his report- which I report in my book but he didn't put in the report- and I now he knew it because Rosenstein was one of the first people he interviewed, why that wasn't in there remains very baffling and I think leads to legitimate suspicion that Mueller was influenced to, you know, pull some punches there.

In turn. Whatever it was that got Mueller "to pull some (extremely important) punches," the President knew what it was. This is not the portrait of someone stupid, crazy, out of control, or even more than reasonably panicked. It is someone whose instincts of self-preservation are very much intact, just as they were when he or his lawyers decided Tuesday morning that it would not be wise to have Gordon Sundland spill his guts, or even some of them.

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Collaborators

In February, CNN Money wrote

Just two months into his new job he was forced to navigate a major controversy, issuing a lifetime ban against then-Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who was caught on tape making racist comments.

Two years after that, Silver denounced the state of North Carolina's controversial transgender bathroom law and pulled the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte.

Those decisions have become hallmarks of Silver's tenure, and their impact is still being felt.

Many people believed that Silver forced Sterling to sell primarily because of a dedication to civil rights, while a few of us thought that the commissioner was making a business decision, bowing to the wishes of superstars (most of them black), who could make life very difficult for Silver if they wished.

Silvers' motivation there was debatable. But here, it is not:

The National Basketball Association (NBA) came under fire on Monday for its response to a tweet by a Houston Rockets official in support of Hong Kong protests for democracy, the latest overseas business to run afoul of political issues in China.

The Rockets’ general manager, Daryl Morey, apologized on Monday for the tweet he swiftly deleted on the weekend, but his support for the protests in the Chinese-ruled city angered Beijing, Chinese fans and the team’s partners in a key NBA market..

The"Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong" remark was deleted and the Rockets' owner cowardly tweeted Morey “does NOT speak for the” franchise, adding "we “we are NOT a political organization. The NBA then released a statement reading

We recognize that the views expressed by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey have deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable. While Daryl has made it clear that his tweet does not represent the Rockets or the NBA, the values of the league support individuals’ educating themselves and sharing their views on matters important to them.

If it had any decency, the NBA would have pulled out of mainland China once reliable reports surfaced of the network of concentration camps Beijing established for the mostly-Muslim, Turkish-speaking Uighurs, concentrated in the totalitarian state's Xinjiang region.. Instead, the Butchers of Beijing have become a major cash cow for the league, and its profits stand to soar as it stands hand-in-hand with one of the most repressive regimes in the world.

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The Daughter As Reprobate

President Donald Trump has announced that he's going to open a federal investigation into Ivanka Trump.

There is no chance of  the President doing that, of course, unless it's a probe into why Ivanka prefers Jared to himself. However, last week he did argue "China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine" and on Sunday morning....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 6, 2019

(Actually, that was $50.000 per month, he didn't get $1.5 billion from China- and what is "plus, plus?" A takeoff on covfefe?)

So if Donald Trump weren't a flaming hypocrite, he'd be asking China to take on Ivanka Trump Kushner, whom we learned in January had been granted by Communist China five trademarks, six months after she announced that she was closing her fashion brand.

Ivanka has learned to diversify, however, and her income does not come only from expanding manufacturing opportunities for Chinese workers. A few months ago we learned that she had

made nearly $4 million from her father's Washington DC hotel in 2018, NBC news reported, citing new financial disclosures released by the White House on Friday.

In total, the historic post office turned hotel brought in $40.8 million for President Trump and his family in 2018, up about half a million from 2017.

But the hotel is also a source of headaches for the Trump administration, the Associated Press reported. It's top spot as a haunt for foreign diplomats and lobbyists has resulted in two federal lawsuits which claim the President is violating a constitutional ban on foreign government payments to the commander in chief.

Ivanka, while not an official White House staff member, also saw family income in 2018 from her husband and Senior White House advisor, Jared Kushner's real estate holdings.

The AP reported that the Kushner Co's slate of apartment buildings and commercial properties in New York generated $1.5 million, while another holding for commercial buildings brought in $6 million.

The sun rises in the east, sets in the west, July is hot in Miami Beach, and members of the Trump family are using the White House, and Americans, to increase their personal fortunes. We've known it for years, but it's always useful to remember that Donald Trump is not the only Trump setting records for conflicts of interest, greed and corruption.

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Not A Guarantee

From the Department of Wishful Thinking:

So that's 1 Republican vote for removal. https://t.co/ZhTDCFXoiS

— David Frum (@davidfrum) October 5, 2019

It's possible, of course. However, in July, 2015 presidential candidate Lindsey Graham labeled Donald Trump a "jackass" who "shouldn't be commander-in-chief."   Trump also was "unfit for office" and "a race-baiting, xenophobic bigot." Now Graham says

You can't get a parking ticket conviction based on hearsay. The whistleblower didn't hear the phone call. Who told the whistleblower about the phone call and everything else? Donald Trump is still an American. Every American deserves to confront their accuser. So this is a sham as far as I'm concerned.

The following February, presidential candidate Marco Rubio called Trump "a con artist" who "has spent his entire career sticking it to the little guy,"and warned the USA cannot give "the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual."

After (justifiably) criticizing mainland China the past few weeks, Rubio was asked his response to the President publicly challenging China to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. The Florida senator replied

I don’t think that’s a real request. I think he did it to gig you guys [reporters]. I think he did it to provoke you to ask me and others and get outraged by it. He plays it like a violin and everybody falls right in, that’s not a real request.

At least Trump Graham largely held out until he played golf with Trump, at which time the latter may have explained to the former the facts of life, which may have pertained to the power of the presidency or anything else. However, it's  disconcerting to see the President rip from the guy Trump once referred to as "little Marco" the little manhood Rubio still had left.

Donald Trump is typically very persuasive, where persuasive is spelled "intimidating."  Moreover, Republicans are, as a species, generally particularly attracted to power, strength, and a need to be with a winner, and Donald Trump is president of the United States of America.

So we cannot be confident that Senator Mitt Romney would vote to uphold the impeachment of President Trump. The Utah senator thus far has shown more courage than arguably any Senate Republican. However, though he undoubtedly is one of the two or three Republicans most likely to vote to convict the President, Romney is not a sure thing and would be unlikely to stand alone as a "yea." 

Additionally, the Senate would set its own rules if the House votes to impeach.And whatever his assurances now, Mitch McConnell ultimately would decide whether there is a trial, when it would take place and under what conditions, and when the vote would take place. No one can know how that would play out, as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Merrick Garland would tell us.

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Donald Russia, Donald Beijing

"China, if you're listening...."

This occurred to Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker, Rachel Bade, and Colby Itkowitz when they wrote

President Trump on Thursday publicly urged China to investigate Democratic challenger Joe Biden, a new request that a foreign government assist his reelection campaign adding to the extraordinary pattern of conduct at the center of a fast-accelerating impeachment inquiry.

With his brazen and direct appeal to the Chinese, delivered before journalists assembled on the South Lawn of the White House, Trump seemed to make a mockery of the charge that he abused the power of his office by pressing his Ukrainian counterpart to examine unfounded allegations of corruption by Biden and his son Hunter.

Trump’s plea to China for an investigation into the Bidens came almost immediately after he addressed his acrimonious trade war with China. “I have a lot of options on China,” Trump warned, “but if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power.”

In case we missed the 1,728 previous hints, we now know what Donald Trump means when he says "we," and it rhymes with "he."

We know also why President Trump has embarked on a trade war with mainland China. It has nothing to do with the USA, and everything to do with Trump family businesses and with inflicting pain, the latter the cornerstone of his immigration policy. Tariffs imposed by Washington may or may not help the USA but they certainly harm the other nation.

One veteran journalist and neo-con does not want the Stepford Republicans to get a free pass for encouraging the dismantling of our national sovereignty:

I think the assumption going forward is every R who has not spoken up supports letting foreign countries determine our elections. Dems should campaign that way and let the R's deny it

— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) October 4, 2019

Notwithstanding the shamelessness of many congressional Republicans, this would at least put on the spot the junior senator from- as Rachel Maddow would put- "the great state of" Utah.

After 70 years in power, the Chinese Communist Party continues a relentless campaign of brutal repression and censorship. An authoritarian China is perhaps the single greatest threat to freedom around the world. pic.twitter.com/WxwSDfL2b9

— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) October 1, 2019

Confronting Romney with Donald Trump's effort to conspire with China would not necessarily make him the first GOP member of the US Congress (aside from Justin Amash) to break with the President.  But criticizing mainland China (a sure loser with the media, but so be it) would place the Republican Party'ss 2012 presidential nominee in a difficult position, as well as placing Trump's wheeling-dealing into context.

That is part of what impeachment is all about. Conviction in the Senate is unlikely, albeit not the impossible task it once was thought to be by all the geniuses on cable television. However, it would force Republican Representatives, and Republican Senators if Mitch McConnell allowed a trial and vote, into a no-win situation.

It also would make abundantly clear that President Trump would without a thought of regret sell out his own country- to Vladimir Putin's Russia, of course, but also to Xi Jin Ping's Communist China.

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When Five Is Eight

This is not- repeat- this is not Nicolle Wallace's mistake. The MSNBC host (in remarks beginning at 8:02 of the video below) stated

Jeanne... I've referenced twice this reporting last Friday by reporter Rebeca Ballhaus, who wrote that in eight times in that conversation you reported Pompeo listened in on, Donald Trump mentioned to the Ukrainian president, his his desire, his wish, or his hope,his aspiration that the Bidens be investigated.

Wall Street Journal reporter Jeanne Cummings- not one of the three writers of the September 21, 2019 story- responded

Absolutely. We were told he kept- we were told that he just kept coming back to it and whne the President of Ukraine would try to move to a different issue, for instance, buying more military equipment, the President would find his way back to "yeah, I hear you, but" and he would again make a pitch that there is something wrong with what the Bidens have done and the corruption around them needed to be investigated. And so when the transcript itself came out, the whole world could see there it was he came back to it, over and over again.

This is why it is critical to label  the document which President Trump released as it was titled, a "Memorandum," or more generically, a summary.

In this paragraph of the "memorandum" the President of the USA suggests twice that Ukraine investigate the Bidens:

I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.

(1- "I would like to find out what happened" and 2-"I would like you get to the bottom of it.")

The next time Trump speaks- according to what has been commonly branded a "transcript"- he asks three (3) times for help from Ukraine:

Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great.4 The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.

(3- "I would him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what's happening and his a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great.";  4-  "..... a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great"; 5-  "Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it.")

And there it is- five times.  But it is neither Wallace nor Cummings who is speaking out of turn. Ballhaus and two other Wall Street Journal reporters on 9/21 had written

President Trump in a July phone call repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son, according to people familiar with the matter, urging Volodymyr Zelensky about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani on a probe that could hamper Mr. Trump’s potential 2020 opponent.

So where are the missing three times (i.e., 8 minus 5)?  There are three possibilities:

1) The WSJ got it flat-out wrong.

2) The "about eight times" really was five times.  However, this error would not have pertained to a small-town routine school board meeting but a conversation in which the alleged leader of the world's greatest superpower tried to persuade a foreign country to investigate a political rival. 

2) The "memorandum" was not a transcript but a summary, with the transcriber having believed it unnecessary to insert portions which, coincidentally or not, included at least three other times Trump pressured Zelensky.

4) There was at least one other communication, presumably a phone call, between Zelensky and Trump, in which Trump pulled his Cosa Nostra act on the Ukrainian president.

The Wall Street Journal is considered one of the greater newspapers in the nation. It would constitute journalistic malpractice if either (1) or (2) above accounts for the discrepancy. The transcript may not have been a transcript but a summary, and not a very good one. Alternatively, the White House has locked away records of another conversation between Trump and Zelensky. This might account for President Trump's surprise decision to release this fairly damning transcript/memorandum/summary, as well as Speaker McConnell's advice to the President that he do so. 

The difference between "about eight times" and "eight times" may be due to something innocent. However, this may be one of Donald Trump's greatest diversions of all, releasing something very bad when there is one or more things much worse, figuring that would satisfy the press and his critics. Someone should find out which it is.

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Not Over Her Head

A very credible and accomplished journalist on the matter of business economics:

The Warren bit (a little overhyped in the headline) will get attention, but the more damning thing in the Zuckerberg tapes is him saying they cloned TikTok and are perfecting it in Mexico before they roll it out to crush them worldwide https://t.co/Bgsyj42DBK

— David Dayen (@ddayen) October 1, 2019

It's probably overhyped only slightly. Dayen was referring to the leaked transcript of internal Facebook meetings of July, when Mark Zuckerberg remarked

So there might be a political movement where people are angry at the tech companies or are worried about concentration or worried about different issues and worried that they’re not being handled well. That doesn’t mean that, even if there’s anger and that you have someone like Elizabeth Warren who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies ... I mean, if she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. I mean, that’s not the position that you want to be in when you’re, you know, I mean … it’s like, we care about our country and want to work with our government and do good things. But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.

If Mark Zuckerberg is wary (as he should be) of a Warren presidency, he has plenty of company. Less than a week ago, CNBC reported

Some big bank executives and hedge fund managers have been stunned by Warren’s ascent, and they are primed to resist her.

“They will not support her. It would be like shutting down their industry,” an executive at one of the nation’s largest banks told CNBC, also speaking on condition of anonymity. This person said Warren’s policies could be worse for Wall Street than those of President Barack Obama, who signed the Dodd-Frank bank regulation bill in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown.

Given that the Administration's motto of "look forward, not backward" on torture was reflected in its approach to the financial services industry, it must take a real sense of entitlement for Wall Street professionals to complain about Obama's policies. Moreover, stock prices rose 182% while Obama was president, more than during any other recent president other than Bill Clinton.

Nonetheless,

The business community’s unease about Warren’s candidacy has surged in tandem with her campaign’s momentum. CNBC’s Jim Cramer said earlier this month that he’s heard from Wall Street executives that they believe Warren has “got to be stopped.”

  

A couple of months ago, when it appeared that Joe Biden's main rival for the Democratic nomination was Bernie Sanders, no such panic publicly arose among major executives in the financial industry. Perhaps they did not see Sanders as much of a threat to Biden or the media ignored their concern about the Vermont senator.

Still, the remarks of Harry Reid, who as Senate Majority Leader recruited Elizabeth Warren as a member of the board overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, suggest that the former bankruptcy law professor from Oklahoma by way of Harvard University knows a thing or two about business and economics. A few weeks ago, Alex Thompson in Politico Magazine noted

“One thing about her conversations with Summers and with Geithner, they couldn’t talk over her head,” says Reid, adding that Summers, a former Treasury secretary and president of Harvard University, wasn’t used to that. “I met with Summers many, many times and, frankly, he talked about a lot of things I didn’t quite comprehend. But with her, that wasn’t the case.”

It's critical that the business titans the next Democratic president must confront understand that they are not playing exclusively on their own turf, that the President has the knowledge and background to stand face-to-face with them. Of Elizabeth Warren, there can be no doubt.

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